


Human Resources

by FloaromaMeadow



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: AU, Child Abuse, Gen, Horror, I'm so sorry, hey guess who took all the worst implications of the virtual world arc and ran with em, meee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-27 11:15:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10017332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloaromaMeadow/pseuds/FloaromaMeadow
Summary: In another world, Gozaburo goes ahead with Plan A.aka, "Local ten-year-old dares to think for half a second that he’s made a better life for himself, is proven horribly, horribly wrong."





	

His head feels heavy and strange and his mouth feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton balls.

His thoughts seem to trickle through his mind slowly, lazily, like syrup.  He’s lying down…funny, he doesn’t remember going to bed.  A low hum rings in his ears.  His eyes are as dry as the inside of his mouth, and they rub unpleasantly against his eyelids when he tries to blink them open.  An instant later he's forced to squint them shut again.  Who left the lights on...?  He reaches up to shield his face from the glare…

Except he doesn’t.  He can’t move his arms.

The boy’s eyes shoot open, and suddenly the peaceful haze is gone.  This isn’t his bed.

The material underneath him feels like the thin, plastic-covered cushion on a doctor’s office check-up table, the kind that squeaks when you move.  But this isn’t a check-up table either.  A sloping rim looms over him, like he’s lying in some kind of pod.  A pair of metal ovals rest at either side of his face—they look sort of like speakers out of the corners of his eyes, but he can’t turn to get a better view.  There are leather straps fastened around each of his wrists and each of his ankles, and another across his forehead, keeping his head pinned to the surface beneath.  He twists frantically against them, but it’s no use.  They won’t budge.

His breath is coming in hitching gasps.  He can feel his heart pounding in his throat.  He almost calls out for help, but he thinks better of it.

He should know by now that no one is coming to save him.

 He tries to calm his breathing, tries to think rationally.  The last thing he remembers is…dinner.  He was eating dinner.  There must have been something in his food.

Who would have done this?  Who _could_ have done this, with the best security money could buy guarding the mansion?  Maybe it was someone working from the inside.  Maybe—

Somewhere outside his range of vision, an automatic door slides open and then shut.  The boy can hear a pair of heavy shoes clicking toward him, and he strains against his restraints, fighting to catch a glimpse of his captor.  “Who do you think you are?” he yells, noting proudly that he sounds more angry than afraid.  “Do you have any idea who you’re—”

His father—his brand-new father—leans over the rim of the pod, and his voice dies in his throat.

“Well, well, Seto,” Gozaburo Kaiba says mildly.  “And here I thought that sedative would last longer.”

“You—”  Seto blinks rapidly.  “You drugged me.”

“No matter, I suppose,” Gozaburo continues, as if he hadn’t heard him.  He shrugs his broad shoulders.  “It’s not like you’re going anywhere, eh, my boy?”

“You…you…”  Seto flounders for a response, but Gozaburo is already turning away from him.

Of course. 

Of _course_ this was too good to be true.

“Did you only adopt us so you could use us as _lab rats_?”

Gozaburo doesn’t answer.  Seto can hear him off to the left, shuffling around and tapping away at some sort of buttons or keys, but the strap won’t let him turn his head to see.

“What do you want from me?  Why are you _doing_ this?”

No answer.

Seto is shaking.  He wills himself to stop, but he can’t.

“What did I do wrong.”

The mysterious noises stop.  Gozaburo steps back into view.  “Why, you did nothing wrong at all.  You’re fulfilling exactly the purpose you were always meant to fulfill.”

“What purpose.”  Seto fights to keep the quiver out of his voice.  The last thing he can afford is to show weakness.

“Hmmm.”  Gozaburo brushes his hands against his perfectly-tailored slacks.  “Well, we do have a few minutes to kill before the device is up and running.”  He crosses his arms and rests them against the edge of the pod.  “Let me tell you a little story, Seto.”

“Oh goody.  Story time.”

“Don’t get smart with me, young man.”

Seto can feel hysterical laughter bubbling up in his chest at the incongruity of Gozaburo scolding him like a stern parent while he has him strapped down and ready to experiment on.

“Now where was I?  Ah, yes.  Once upon a time there was a little boy named Noah.”  Gozaburo clears his throat, a low harrumph.  “My son.  Noah.”

Seto’s brow furrows.  “You already have a son?”  He’d researched Gozaburo Kaiba extensively.  How had he never heard about that?

“I _had_ a son.  There was…an accident.”

“If I didn’t think you were about to give _me_ an accident, I’d offer my condolences,” Seto mutters.

Gozaburo elects to ignore him.  “Noah was my sole son and heir.  He was meant to inherit my company someday, so his passing would have been a great inconvenience to me, as you can imagine.”

“Poor you.”

“I assembled a team of the greatest doctors in the world, but his body was beyond saving.  His mind, however…”  Gozaburo gazes at something over Seto’s head.  When Seto rolls his eyes back as far as they can go, he can just make out the shape of a huge metal sphere, a sphere swarming with wires and dotted with small blinking lights.

“His mind I had digitized and stored in that supercomputer.”

Seto’s eyes shoot back to his adoptive father.  Gozaburo has found a way to _digitize the human mind?_ Now really isn’t the time to be marveling over technological advancements, but…the applications for virtual reality…for bioengineering…for life after death…

Imagine what he could do with that technology and _card games._

“Every memory, every thought, every aspect of Noah’s personality was preserved.  The only thing he lacks is a means of interacting with the physical world.  Which, unfortunately, is a major setback for a future CEO.”

“Hard to shake hands with potential investors if you don’t have hands, I guess.”

“So I had every trace of Noah wiped from the public record.  No one would be able to find any proof of his original appearance.”

That would explain why Seto hadn’t turned up anything about this 'Noah' in his research, but what did it have to do with—

“And then I set about finding my son a new body.”  For the first time since he walked into the room, Gozaburo looks squarely into Seto’s eyes.

“That, Seto, is where you come in.”

Seto’s stomach drops.

For a long moment he can’t even speak.  When he finally finds his tongue, he feels a flush of shame at the childish squeak that comes out.  “N-no—you—you can’t—”

Something dings off to the left.  “Ah, would you look at that,” Gozaburo says cheerfully.  “The machine’s ready.”

He pulls a remote control out of the pocket of his sport coat.

“You—”  Seto’s eyes are burning.  He blinks it back.  “You can’t _do_ this!”

Gozaburo raises an eyebrow.  “Can’t I?”

A flurry of calculations runs through Seto’s mind—offers, concessions, threats, abject begging.

He doesn’t want to give Gozaburo the satisfaction of hearing him plead like a frightened child.

But he _is_ a frightened child.

“I—I can be useful to you.  I can invent things, I can help your company, I could, I could probably build your son a body, I have lots of ideas, I—”

“Now there’s a thought.”  Gozaburo strokes his chin.  “I _could_ always keep you around as an idea guy and use your brother’s body instead.”

Seto’s vision goes white.  “Don’t you _dare_ ,” he snarls, all thought of begging for his life forgotten, “lay a _finger_ on Mokuba.”

Gozaburo smirks.  “Then I guess you don’t really have anything to bargain with.  Rule number one of business, Seto: never engage an opponent unless you know you have the weapons you need to take him down.”

He presses a button on the remote control.  A clear plastic hatch starts to close over the top of the pod.

Seto stares off into space.  He tries to think of something, anything, but his mind is nothing but white noise.  The hatch seals with a hydraulic hiss and the metal ovals are slowly contracting toward his temples and _this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, no no no no no…_

“Now now, Seto,” Gozaburo says.  His voice is muffled through the walls of the pod, his form twisted into a funhouse monstrosity by the curvature of the plastic.  “You should be proud.  Your life will fuel the continued success of Kaiba Corp.  Could you ever have contributed something that important to the world of your own doing?”

Deep inside Seto Kaiba, something snaps.

He bares his teeth.  He gives one last, feral yank against the ties that bind him.  With every ounce of strength left in his lungs, he screams, "You can’t do this to me!   _You’ll be sorry!  I’LL MAKE YOU SORRY—_ ”

The ovals clamp around his temples.  His scream cuts off.  His body goes slack.  His eyes turn lifeless.  If it weren’t for the slowing rise and fall of his chest, it would be easy to mistake him for a doll.

Or a corpse.

Gozaburo stares intently at the small, prone body.  Seconds tick by.

The supercomputer hums softly.

Then a finger twitches.  The eyes blink. 

A small voice croaks out, “Father?”

Gozaburo’s face splits into an unaccustomed-looking grin.  “Hello, Noah.  Welcome back to the real world.”

“Is that really you, Father?  Am I…am I really alive?”  Noah tries to sit up.  A flicker of confusion crosses his face when he meets resistance.

“Hold on, son, let me get you out of there.”  With a push of a button, the hatch springs open and the straps retract into the side of the pod.

Shakily, Noah swings his legs over the edge.  He gazes around the stark, uninviting room as though it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.  Then his beaming expression dims.  “Father, who was that boy?”

“What boy?”

“The boy I saw in my room.  Right before you woke me up.”  Noah wrinkles his nose.  “He was crying.”

“Er, well, you see—”

Ignoring his father’s fumbling reply, Noah hops down from the pod and peers into the smooth metal surface of the supercomputer.  He starts at his reflection.  “I—I don’t look like me.  I look just like _him_.”  He reaches a trembling hand to his face, jerks it away as though burned, swings around to face his father.  “Is this _his_ body?”

“Sorry I couldn’t find something a bit closer to your likeness, son, but cloning and robotics haven’t advanced to quite the level I needed, so this was the best I could do on short notice.”  Gozaburo casts an appraising eye over his handiwork.  “Still, it’s the same age as your old body, roughly the same build, and in perfect health.  It should serve you well enough.”

“But—but that boy—doesn’t he need a body too?”

Gozaburo waves a dismissive hand.  “He’ll be better off in the virtual world than he was in that backwater orphanage I plucked him out of.  Besides, he’s just some urchin.  You’re the future head of Kaiba Corp.  This body will be put to much more valuable use in your hands.”

“I—I guess that makes sense,” Noah says.  A twinge of uncertainty still clings to his voice, but he’s not looking at his father anymore.  He’s staring hungrily down at the flexing of his new fingers.

“Now I have one last piece of business to take care of, so why don’t you…”  Gozaburo trails off.  “Actually, hold on a minute.  I forgot to mention, but the boy—Seto—has a brother.  His name is Mokuba, and he’ll be under the impression that _you’re_ his brother.  You, ah, should probably play along for the time being.”

“He—I—what?  But, um—”

“Don’t worry, you shouldn’t have to put up with him for long.  I’ll see about having him sent back to the orphanage.”  Gozaburo places his hands on Noah’s shoulders and gives him a gentle push.  “Now why don’t you run along while I finish up in here.  Go enjoy being alive.”

Noah drags the toe of his sneaker across the floor.  For a moment it looks like he might object.

The moment passes.

“Yes, father.  Thank you, father.”  Suddenly he spins around and wraps his arms around Gozaburo’s legs.  “I can never thank you enough.”

Gozaburo ruffles Noah's hair awkwardly.  “Yeah, yeah, now run along.”

Noah does.

Gozaburo waits until the automatic door closes behind him.

Then he turns, arms clasped behind his back, to face the supercomputer.

“You know, it takes an awful lot of money to keep this thing running,” he says conversationally to the empty room.  “When it housed my son and heir it was worth the expense, but as for you…well…”

The fingers of one hand snake around the cord that connects the machine to the wall.  With the other hand, he pats the shell of the supercomputer like a dog.

“You’re not quite so unexpendable.”

He pulls the plug.

The mechanical hum is choked off.  The lights flicker and die.

Gozaburo swings the cord around in a lazy arc.

“Second rule of business, Seto: no loose ends.”


End file.
